Briton's release ordered by rebel cleric

A freelance journalist kidnapped in the southern Iraqi city of Basra was freed yesterday after the rebel Shia cleric, Moqtada al-Sadr, demanded his release.

James Brandon, 23, who was on assignment for the Sunday Telegraph and the Scotsman, was snatched from his hotel room by more than 30 heavily armed militia who threatened to kill him if US forces did not leave the holy city of Najaf within 24 hours.

But within hours of Mr Sadr calling for his release Brandon was taken to the clerics' local offices in Basra, where he held an impromptu news conference.

He thanked the kidnappers and Mr Sadr's aides for working for his release, before being handed over to the British consulate by Brigadier Mohammed Kadhem al-Ali, the head of Basra police.

"I'm OK, I'm recovering," he said. "I've been released thanks to the Mahdi army, because they intervened and negotiated with the kidnappers."

He added: "They just told me they realised I was a journalist and they said I was going to be let go. I didn't quite believe it until it actually happened."

Several hours earlier a video made by his captors showed Brandon standing bare-chested and dazed with a large white bandage wrapped around his head.

A man masked by a balaclava was seen standing next to him, making death threats: "We are the sons of the Iraqi people. We demand the American forces withdraw from Najaf within 24 hours or we will kill this British hostage," he said, patting Brandon on the shoulder.

The ashen-faced hostage then nervously turned to the camera: "I'm a journalist, I just write about what is happening in Iraq ... [I'm] James Brandon from the Sunday Telegraph."

Brandon was snatched from the Diafa hotel, a medium-sized city establishment, located not far from Basra's Shatt al Arab corniche, in a bustling commercial area that is home to a number of restaurants and hotels.

"When Brandon checked in on Wednesday we told him that the security situation was not good," said a receptionist at the hotel, Abu Mohammed.

"You are the only journalist here, so take care, we said. He replied: 'What am I supposed to do, I'm a journalist? I'm going to stay for a couple of nights and then leave'.

"On Thursday at 11pm a police car and a minibus pulled up close to the hotel and then deployed in the street.

"There were 30 men, five of them dressed as police. When they entered the hotel they took the magazine out of the Kalashnikov of the guard."

The men then approached the reception desk. "The receptionist said 'Yes can I help you?' But they hit him on the back just above the kidney with the butt of the Kalashnikov that was behind the desk.

They said, 'You have a British journalist staying in your hotel'. I don't know where they got the information.

"Then they went upstairs and broke open the door of room 112 and they took him by force."

Brandon, sporting a black eye and swelling around his face, said he heard a knock on his hotel room door and when he opened it eight men with guns, their faces covered by balaclavas, burst in and dragged him off.

The kidnappers beat him, threatened to kill him and even carried out a fake execution with an unloaded gun, Brandon said. "All sorts of unpleasant things happened."

Television pictures taken at the hotel later showed a trail of blood leading from Brandon's hotel room on to the stairs.

Brandon had spent more than a year working in Iraq, after arriving in July 2003 to work for the Baghdad Bulletin, a bi-monthly newspaper set up by young western university graduates.

It was former colleagues at the Bulletin who helped negotiate Brandon's release yesterday. Dave Enders, who was the paper's editor, contacted representatives of Mr Sadr and arranged for the cleric to demand he be freed.

Educated at Westminster school, Brandon, who is a quarter Egyptian, went to York University before enrolling at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, where he was learning Arabic.

A former colleague on the paper said yesterday: "He was not really keen on being a journalist, I think he just got addicted to the curiosity of the thing."

When the Baghdad Bulletin closed Brandon got a job as a sub-editor on Iraq Today, another English language newspaper in Baghdad, before working as a freelance for several newspapers, including the Independent, Sunday Telegraph and the Scotsman.

Matthew D'Ancona, deputy editor of the Sunday Telegraph, said Brandon had been in Basra filing material for this week's edition of the paper among other projects.